Saturday, June 9, 2012

This freakin' nutjob makes me so angry can't even bring myself to check his bio but seem to remember his "church" worked as a sweat shop in Europe, so maybe the fool ain't from my great state although his level of sustained idiocy does qualify him for election to the FL Legislature.

That ordinary people did these things is deeply disturbing; that they manufactured a social rationale for their acts is more disturbing still. Look for a while at the picture of the lynching of Rubin Stacy, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1930. Look first at Stacy, then turn to the little girl in the summer dress, looking at Stacy, and then to the man behind her, perhaps her father, in the spotless white shirt and slacks and the clean white skimmer. They will stand there forever, admiring the proof of their civilization.]

I, your not so humble blogger, find the following picture infinitely disturbing but perhaps understandable given the ritual of a Saturday night in the south for white males: get drunk, kill a Negro, go to church Sunday morning, and then take your kids out to look at a lynched corpse of a black man, and laugh as the children mutilate the bodies, probably just the boys with pocket knives as girls would not want to bloody their Sunday school dresses even as the spectacle defiles their very souls.

[Rubin Stacey, an African American man accused of "threatening and frightening a white woman," was lynched in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935. White children and adults observe his corpse hanging from a tree in this photograph.]

[Whether because of Williams' efforts, or simply because the world has kept turning, one of the most atrocious chapters of Florida history is getting another look. The six men who tortured Claude Neal in the woods have never been publicly named. Those who kept his severed fingers in jars as souvenirs have not had to explain. Greenwood, a place where the names on the church rolls haven't changed, has not had to face its history. Its people — the shrinking number who know — are still protecting the reputations of killers.]